Global Grassroots

Global Grassroots is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our mission is to catalyze women and girls as leaders of conscious social change in their communities.
Global Grassroots' work is guided by four core values that form our theory of change:
1. Deepening personal consciousness and contributing towards the common good are both essential to social change.
2. One of the most effective levers of social change is a woman with the capability, resources, power, courage and inner commitment to initiate positive change for herself and others.
3. Sustaining and accelerating conscious social change requires investment in supporting civil society architecture.
4. Mind-body trauma healing plu...

13 Graduate from 2015 Young Women's Academy!

By Kathleen P. Mahoney - Fundraising and Communications Coordinator

Three of our 2015 Young Women's Academy Graduates

Thank you for your generous support of our 2015 Young Women’s Academy for Conscious Change in Uganda. With your help, 13 vulnerable young women have graduated from our program and are now entering university! This is what you have helped to achieve:

Thirteen confident young leaders have done amazing work in their communities, impacting thousands of people through individual ventures of their own choosing and design. Each program engaged a variety of stakeholders, including teachers, church leaders, parents, community leaders, police, and schoolgirls like themselves. Their initiatives included planting hundreds of tomato plants and tangerine seedlings to provide revenue to keep girls in school, working to keep children from living on the streets, and teaching girls about the risks of early pregnancy. In Uganda, our graduates’ work in schools and communities benefited more than 2,800 people over the last six months! And the ripple effects of all of the ventures, such as how many girls complete their education and emerge from a life in poverty or how many children grow up healthy because their mothers learned about nutrition now, will be felt for years to come in

During their final days before graduation, participants presented their venture impact assessments as well as observations and insights about their work and about themselves. Each young woman reported that the process of bringing conscious social change has dramatically increased their confidence levels. They all know now that they are capable of leading their communities to address issues facing women and girls.

At the graduation celebration, our young change agents each received a Certificate of Successful Completion of the Academy along with a scholarship to help pay for their first semester at university. All of us at Global Grassroots are proud of our graduates and we offer our sincere congratulations on a job well done!

We are now gearing up for our 2016 Young Women’s Academy. In November, our team in Uganda will accept applications from young women just graduating from secondary school. Participants will convene in January to learn all of the skills necessary to launch and run their own micro-NGO in their respective villages during the break between high school and the start of university. Individually, these young women will address a variety of social issues in their communities.

We humbly seek your support for our 2016 program so that we may not only continue our work with vulnerable young women but also increase the number of participants in our Academy. Each year the reach of our Young Women's Academy grows, impacting thousands of people, predominately women and girls. What a difference you make in the lives of these change agents and their beneficiaries.Thank you.

2015 participants in a group exercise

Graduation celebration means cake!

Oct 2, 2015

Let Us Build Ourselves Needs YOU!

By Kathleen P. Mahoney - Fundraising and Communications Coordinator

Let Us Build Ourselves students

Hello!

Thank you so much for your loyal and generous support of Let Us Build Ourselves! While “We couldn’t do it without you” is always a thoughtful sentiment to express to donors, in this case it couldn’t be more true. That’s why this is a difficult report to write. As you know, our wonderful group of dedicated folks has been working very hard to teach their neighbors and community members how to read, write, and do basic math and, along with all of that, they are helping to instill pride, confidence, and dignity where there often is none. Being illiterate is a heavy burden and the Let Us Build Ourselves team’s mission has been to try to lighten that load.

The last several months have been a challenging time for our team. The demand for their help remains high and they try not to turn anyone away who wants to learn. The group gets some of their revenue from generous supporters such as you as well as from a traditional dance troupe they put together. This talented troupe is comprised of children of some of the women we tutor along with other children in the village. It also includes street children in the community. These children also receive tutoring from the team and benefit from the healthy, positive environment. They learn self-discipline and how to work as part of a team and they gain confidence and self-esteem, all attributes that will help them leave behind life on the streets.

The dance troupe is often hired to perform at weddings and other festive events and celebrations. Unfortunately this endeavor has not been as lucrative over the long haul as the Let Us Build Ourselves team had anticipated. As a result, meeting monthly expenses has been very hard for Innocent and his team. They have had difficulty meeting payroll and several of the teachers have gone without pay, just so their students can continue to learn. In June, Innocent reported here that they had caught up with payroll – to that point - but they were still short to meet other expenses. Since June, they have continued to struggle financially. This has been demoralizing for them all and several team members have had to find other work. Sadly, the Let Us Build Ourselves team feels they may have to close the door on their venture.

The team’s annual budget is $5,000. This year, revenue from all sources, including your generous donations and the dance troupe, totals just $770, a tremendous shortfall that the team has done their best to work around. We are hoping to find one (or several) donors who would be willing to sponsor the team, making a commitment to support the team from year-to-year. In the meantime, we would be incredibly grateful if donations could at least help Innocent and the team cover the shortfall to date: $2,982. This would catch them up on payroll for the past three months and cover outstanding expenses such as rent, class materials, etc. Any contributions at this point will help and will be gratefully accepted but we must ask: is there a donor out there who would be willing to make a larger gift to help Innocent and the Let Us Build Ourselves team continue to do their admirable and important work?

Again, our heartfelt thanks and deepest gratitude go out to everyone who has supported this project. Without you, hundreds of people, mostly women, would not have the ability to even sign their name to a piece of paper. Thank you.

Jul 13, 2015

Team Growth and Program Expansion

By Ayla Schlosser - Founder and Executive Director

Resonate Team

This summer has been a summer of growth and expansion for the Resonate team. We have had the pleasure of welcoming three summer interns to help with our monitoring and evaluation and communications strategies, and we have hired a full time Operations Manager to streamline and run our organizational systems and processes. As a result, we have had the capacity to develop new curriculum and even expand to another country!

We partnered with Global Grassroots to deliver our core Storytelling for Leadership training to a group of young social entrepreneurs in Rwanda, and also to a group in Uganda – our first ever workshop in Uganda. These young women are learning to run their own social ventures, and so knowing how to present themselves and their work to their communities will play an integral role in their success.

We also partnered with The Imbuto Foundation to deliver training to 60 leaders of Rwandan organizations focused on youth development and empowerment. Each of these groups is an ally in our work to inspire young leaders to become change makers, and we hope that this first connection will spark many more opportunities to support Rwanda’s youth.

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